Despite a very overcast all day mist with light rain and temperatures hovering
just above freezing, 6 brave souls checked out the ponds, inlets, bays and shoreline
of the north Jersey shore with mixed results. Beginning at Manasquan Inlet,
where the visibility was good for only a hundred yards beyond the beach, Common
Loons, Black Scoters, Red-breasted Mergansers and Bonapatre's Gulls were all
that were found. A Double-crested Cormorant also flew over the dunes.
A small flock of Boat-tailed Grackles was seen on the way to Old Sam's Pond,
which is now a Bird Sanctuary called Lake of the Lilies. Due to the preceding
weeks bitterly cold temperatures, most of the pond surface was covered in ice
concentrating the birds in small areas of open water. Here we had 5 Canvasbacks,
a female Greater Scaup amongst several Lesser Scaup and a Snow Goose. Stockton
Lake produced good numbers of Gadwall, Bufflehead and Brant while Little Silver
Lake held Hooded Mergansers and Wreck Pond had Coot, Ruddy Duck and a 2nd winter
Lesser Black-backed Gull.
The bird of the day was an Orange-crowned Warbler that flew over our heads and
into the dune vegetation at Ocean and Brown in Sea Girt, where we followed it
for some 100 yards, catching brief glimpses as it worked it's way through the
shrubs. It was actually a two-warbler stop as we picked up a Yellow-rumped Warbler!

Lake Como produced a Pied-billed Grebe and a pair of Shovelers while at Shark
River Inlet, we had a large flock of Purple Sandpipers and smaller numbers of
Sanderlings. Though the winds were out of the north east, and seemingly perfect
conditions for bringing alcids close to shore, we continued to dip on these,
finding only small rafts of scaups and Black Scoters, with a few Surf Scoters
amongst them and a very small numbers of Long-tailed Duck and Common Loons -
overall not many birds were seen in the ocean.

Shark River held huge numbers of Brant and Mute Swans as well as a dozen roosting
Great Cormorants and two Horned Grebes. An adult and a juvenile Tundra Swan
were also seen but the highlight here was locating the reported Eurasian Wigeon
off of Marconi Road, amongst good numbers of American Wigeon, as it was roosting.

Heading north towards Sandy Hook, the ocean continued to disappoint and very
few birds other than some Common Goldeneyes were on the Shrewsbury River in
Monmouth Beach, where the Tufted Duck was located the previous afternoon. We
picked up a couple of new species for the trip at Sandy Hook, including Northern
Harrier, Tree Sparrow and huge numbers of Cedar Waxwings, including a flock
of 600 plus birds. One final scan of the ocean produced our only Red-throated
Loon, and even that was flying away from us! Where did they all go?